ISS is still leaking air after latest repair efforts fail | Russian boffins searching for root cause in their segment of the outpost, former cosmonaut says
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/01/iss_is_still_leaking/
ISS is still leaking air after latest repair efforts fail | Russian boffins searching for root cause in their segment of the outpost, former cosmonaut says
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/01/iss_is_still_leaking/
11 Comments
Omg root cause is highly sensitized metal (over 30 years old) that has all sorts of pores through the thickness. There is no “repair” except for maybe taping up the entire module…they did this somewhat already, to provide a barrier coating. If only it could be detached but the module location is too central to ISS.
Imagine something like this happening on a trip to Mars. Would be horrifying.
What’s a boffin? I’ve never heard that term before.
A NASA astronaut must have drilled another hole to sabotage the Russian segment. /s
Shitty clickbait.
All parties on and invested into the ISS have been looking for a solution since 2019. The remediations also didn’t fail, they greatly mitigated the leak without completely solving the problem.
The only point of uncertainty/disagreement is at what arbitrary threshold they should permanently seal-off the module if/when the leak gets worse. Personally I can see the value in closely studying the deterioration profile of aging space construction, and it’s learning we can carry forward to future projects that aren’t going to be intentionally de-orbited in 5 years.
I’m guessing that flex seal isn’t safe in a sealed environment. If it will seal a screen door in a boat I’m sure a leaky space station wouldn’t be a problem.
30-year modules, at some moment the materials start to pay the toll. The ISS is a research facility, and this is a good investigation of pressurised modules behaviour in space during a long time.
At some point, the ISS has to go, we know how to live in low Earth orbit. We need to learn how to live on the Moon, in deep space, or why not, on Mars. I wish the beyond LEO efforts were an international collaboration like the ISS, but the times are changing.
Haven’t heard the term boffin used in a while
Have they tried coating the service module transport tunnel in flex tape yet? /s
Do you guys think the ISS is being replaced any time soon? maybe Elon Musk or NASA/ESA will work together to pool a few trillion dollars for a new space station? surely we have the technology for all of that and it’s a global benefit thing so surely they’d be able to fund it.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[ESA](/r/Space/comments/1mex8fz/stub/n6dejoi “Last usage”)|European Space Agency|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1mex8fz/stub/n6d0chn “Last usage”)|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[Roscosmos](/r/Space/comments/1mex8fz/stub/n6dn94w “Last usage”)|[State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscosmos_State_Corporation)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1mex8fz/stub/n6djk6m “Last usage”)|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine_family)) under development by SpaceX|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
—————-
^([Thread #11586 for this sub, first seen 1st Aug 2025, 16:39])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)